Jerry O. Tuttle, VADM, USN (Ret)
December 18, 1934 ~ October 30, 2018
Vice Admiral Jerry O. Tuttle, an only child of Depression-era Indiana farmers who rose from the ranks to become a highly decorated combat pilot and one of the great military innovators of the 20th century, died October 30 in Fairfax VA after a long illness. He was 83.
Admiral Tuttle was an iconic, even cult, figure in the U.S. military as well as in many Allied militaries abroad and is generally credited with being the inventor of modern command and control and the pivotal personality that led Navy especially across the divide from the industrial to the digital age. He was seen by many as a genuine military genius and compared with the air power and blitzkrieg innovators of the 1920s, with British Admiral Jackie Fisher, who transformed the Royal Navy at the opening of the last Century, and with Admiral Hyman Rickover, whose nuclear submarines would rely on many of Admiral Tuttle’s innovations.
In contrast with these, however, he was neither a theorist nor the champion of a single technology, though he had deep expertise in military communications and revolutionized both its form and function. He spent much of his career at sea and much of that time in command at sea. In particular, he had exceptionally long tours as a commander of four separate carrier task forces. In consequence, Admiral Tuttle’s inventions and innovations arose out of operational experience, and more than once, from operational necessity.
Like Thomas Edison, Admiral Tuttle was a perpetual dynamo for whom innovation was a part of his essential character— a consequence of indefatigable and explosive energy, a unique intellect, technological curiosity, and relentless drive. One after another, his innovations continued throughout the span of his career and across the entire landscape of warfare, from submarines and satellites to cryptography, information technology, avionics, antennas, modeling and simulation, and above all, operational synthesis.
“He seemed at once to be both an irresistible force and an immoveable object,” a former aide said. Less than eight years off the farm with just a small-town high school education, then-Lieutenant Tuttle was already an accomplished pilot, had earned both his undergraduate degree and a graduate degree in communications engineering (he later would earn two more graduate degrees) and at the age of 28 was designing and fielding the critical system that enabled Navy’s new nuclear submarines to communicate.
Above all, he was an exceptional pilot. Like almost every other boy in America during the late 1940s, he was fascinated by the first jet airplanes. In time, he flew nearly all the Navy fixed-wing and jet carrier aircraft inventory. He made so many arrested landings on carriers that if one were flown each day it would take nearly three years to duplicate his feat. For a time, he was Navy’s senior aviator— the “Gray Eagle”— a position that de facto made him the community leader and patron for more than half of Navy’s officer corps. As such he held great power over promotions and positions, which he wielded masterfully, gathering about him a school of officers who were both technologically and operationally astute. He placed them key positions within the Fleet and the shore bureaucracies, where collectively they became the lever by which he revolutionized the Navy.
In Vietnam, Admiral Tuttle became a highly decorated combat pilot, flying 260 missions in the single-seat light attack A-4. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for personal heroism three times, and he held twenty-three Navy Air Medals. Combat contemporaries invariably describe him in the cockpit as intense, ferociously aggressive, and fearless under fire of North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns. But he told an interviewer in 2006 that the most frightening moments in his life were when he proposed to Barbara Ann Bonifay, whom he met on a blind date at flight school in Pensacola in the summer of 1955. She said yes, and the couple were married for 63 years. They had five children.
In “Boots” — as she was known to their friends— Tuttle met his match. Beautiful, vivacious, and polished, she, too, had a brilliant mind, a formidable will and extraordinary reservoirs of energy. In particular, she had a gift for human empathy, and like her husband, she had innate leadership skills. During the frightening years Tuttle’s squadron was in Vietnam and later during the long tours in which he had command at sea, she carried exceptionally heavy burdens for decades to look after families left at home.
Together they were a matched set, and in the end, they both became legendary in the Navy. “They had a sort of gravitational pull that caused people in any room, no matter how large or small, to gather around them,” said a wardroom friend. “He had a great laugh you could hear across a room, and inevitably all the action would gravitate around Boots’ animated figure. It simply was not possible not to want to be around them.”
Jerry Owen Tuttle was born December 18, 1934 in Spencer County, Indiana to Charles Tuttle and the former Wenonah Parker. They worked a small, marginal family farm only a few miles from Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood homestead cleared from the woodlands and plowed out of the sandy deposits of Ohio River. Growing up there, Admiral Tuttle told an interviewer, “all you could do was throw a hundred baseballs a day against the barn wall and listen to the radio at night.”
Like Lincoln, he spoke in a reedy and nasal Midwestern twang. Both were pranksters and both were accomplished storytellers and actors. Both exhibited a genius that was evident at an early age to those they grew up with; both were exceedingly ambitious; and both had a gift for rapidly seeing into the heart of complex problems and finding the core matters.
There, however, any comparison ends. If Lincoln strove to be the calm in the storm, Tuttle was himself a storm. Neither laconic nor patient, Admiral Tuttle had the wiry athletic frame of the baseball shortstop he once aspired to be as a boy, and it was fueled with endless reservoirs of physical energy. He was a relentless, focused and demanding personality that wore out almost everyone that worked for him, yet he was genuinely interested in them and meticulously attentive to them.
His mind was remarkably clear and worked so fast that at times in conversation his speech could not keep up. To the uninitiated, he seemed to talk in a stream of consciousness that could be bewildering and made all the more so as he grew more intense with gestures like a boxer’s jabs and suddenly-narrowed blue eyes that could burn through iron plate. He could be easy to underestimate— once.
Admiral Tuttle was masterful in command. There was never a question of what he wanted or when he wanted it, which was always immediately. Famously, on more than one occasion as a carrier group commander, he summarily fired a particularly poor performing staff officer, ordered him to be launched immediately off the ship and then recall the aircraft and the unfortunate passenger an hour later once the lesson was learned. Such episodes betrayed an essential character attribute: he was a master of delegation and a consummate builder of teams, and it was this that enabled him to extend his vision far beyond his personal reach.
Like Lincoln, Jerry Tuttle left home and never returned, but in the final years of his life the Admiral was preoccupied with plans to improve the economic future of his hometown of Hatfield. It was one of the few projects in which he would not succeed, for time would not allow it. In 1955, he reported to Navy enlisted boot camp in Great Lakes, IL along with hundreds of other recruits for basic training. So obvious were his abilities that at the end of the first week, he was pulled aside and offered flight training and a commission. He was awarded the American Spirit Honor Medal on graduation from Great Lakes.
Eighteen months later in the autumn of 1956, Boots pinned his wings on him. They spent the next four years at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego CA, where Admiral Tuttle flew both fighters and attack aircraft and held every billet in the squadron. There he had been noticed again, and although he had only a high school degree, he was sent to the prestigious Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey CA. By then, he was already a father of two young children, and he worked night and day to earn both his undergraduate and a graduate degree in communications engineering simultaneously.
In 1962, only eight years out of an Indiana high school, Lieutenant Tuttle was ordered to the Pentagon to head a team tasked with developing the technology to solve one of the most urgent operational problems of the time. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy Administration had grown increasingly concerned about command and control of nuclear weapons and had ordered an overhaul of the existing national command system. Lieutenant Tuttle was given the task of devising and fielding a system to provide nuclear launch codes to the first class of the submarines capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles. His team fielded an aircraft-borne radio antenna nearly five miles long that trailed behind a modified tanker aircraft and could transmit signals capable of penetrating the ocean depths to the submarine. It was a solution typical of him: throughout his life he led people to bring new technology to tactics in order to enable new ways of operating. Tuttle’s system was known as TACAMO for “Take Charge and Move Out”— a certain Tuttle-ism. It remains in use today more than six decades later.
For the next 20 years with only three short interruptions, Admiral Tuttle’s career was a continuing series of increasingly senior aviation and command assignments. During two tours over Vietnam, like Senator John McCain, Admiral James Stockdale and hundreds of other Navy aviators of his generation, Tuttle flew the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk— universally called the “scooter” by pilots— in the Rolling Thunder bombing operations over North Vietnam conducted from 1965 to 1968. Though it was fast for the time and handled well under light load, the A-4 was sluggish to maneuver when it carried heavy bomb loads, and against increasingly sophisticated North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft fire, losses mounted.
A replacement aircraft was needed urgently, and after a hiatus at the Naval War College, where he earned his second master’s degree, and a tour as an aide to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, it would be then-Commander Tuttle who was tapped in 1970 to introduce the A-7 successor aircraft into the fleet, to define its tactics, and to command its first squadron. He was promoted to Captain, and throughout that decade he ascended to a series of major commands, including Carrier Air Wing 3, USS Kalamazoo (AOR-6) and the aircraft carrier USS John Kennedy (CV-67). All along the way, he redefined operations by pushing men, technology and tactics to the edge. In one exercise, he commanded his pilots to land on anchored carriers to force them to learn to fly with less speed and lift. In several others, he developed the first tactics for very-long-range carrier air strikes from the sea onto land. A contemporary called him “the best tactical commander since World War II.”
In 1980, Tuttle was selected as a flag officer, and in an unusual assignment, he was sent to a high position within the Defense Intelligence Agency. There he became exposed for the first time to the detailed inner workings of the intelligence world and especially its satellite assets, which he saw could be refocused and reapplied to tactical targeting if new technology could be applied. And, like a bargain hunter in an estate sale, he saw that the intelligence agencies had a diminishing use for an entire constellation of communications satellites, which if modified, a communications-starved Navy might take over on the cheap.
As a result, though Admiral Tuttle held many flag assignments including command of the Sixth Fleet Task Force off off Lebanon in 1983 and was later the Navy Inspector General, for the remainder of his career he became focused on three fundamental tasks that would transform the Navy and ultimately all military command and control. First, he was determined to bring targeting intelligence directly to the battle commander and, on a machine-to-machine level, directly to the weapons themselves, eliminating the practice of channeling it first through intelligence “fusion centers.” This forced him to take on a large segment of the entrenched Navy community, which he ultimately dismantled. It was a complex, multistep achievement that paved the way for the modern weapons of Desert Storm— long-range cruise missiles targeted precisely by the Global Positioning System and other resources that he would bring on line during the last years of his career.
The second task was to buy, borrow or steal the communications bandwidth necessary to get that information onto Navy ships at sea and tactical units ashore where communications were poor. He did all three to do it, had the antennas and processors invented to use different signals and wavelengths, and a second fiefdom, the Navy Communications Command, fell under his axe.
The third task he set about was so revolutionary it is difficult to imagine today. In 1983 aboard his flagship as commander of the Mediterranean carrier task forces steaming off Lebanon, Admiral Tuttle’s frustration mounted daily as he watched dozens of sailors and staff officers inside his darkened command center struggle with grease pencils, teletype messages and paper charts to try keep a simultaneous plot of the complex and dynamic tactical air, land and sea picture ashore and afloat.
He pulled together a team of contractors and Navy technicians, who three years later produced the world’s first tactical workstation. It projected targeting data from a variety of different sensors all over the earth as real time targetable positions overlaid on electronic charts and manipulable on new screen technology then called simply “windows.” Officially it was called the Joint Operational Tactical System— JOTS— but everyone understood it was Jerry O. Tuttle’s system. It made long-standing programs in the Navy that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and were years overdue obsolete overnight.
Armed with this and an increasing cadre of followers in the Navy, in Congress and in industry, over the next 10 years, hundreds of people at first, then thousands, were called in to hone the JOTS system. When he got his third star, Admiral Tuttle moved to JCS and once there, when he personally beat, dragged and kicked the long-delayed Navy GPS Program into space, he had created something so fundamental that several billion cell phone users today could not imagine a world without Google Maps. By February 1991, the JOTS terminal was a joint system in reality, and GPS-enabled work stations made it possible for General Norman Schwarzkopf ’s “Hail Mary” play to sweep across the western desert of Iraq to destroy the Iraqi Army.
His final career tour was on the Chief of Naval Operations staff, where he was deliberately extended longer to solidify his revolution and slay any remaining dragons. By the time he retired in 1994, his legacy was set in stone. He succeeded both dramatically and decisively, after a long succession of technological innovations both large and small, many redirections and reallocations of large Pentagon programs, operational and tactical exercises, and without question as a result of sheer personal determination. Before Admiral Tuttle, Navy used manual Morse, teletypes and paper charts to drop dumb bombs from airplanes over short distances. When he finished, Navy had the Global Positioning System, AEGIS, modeling and simulation, the full use of three communications satellite constellations, digital workstations, and altogether new weaponry that flew up and down mountain sides and landed a thousand miles inland with accuracy that astounded the world.
Admiral Tuttle’s personal decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (3); Defense Superior Service Medal; Legion of Merit (4); Distinguished Flying Cross (3); Meritorious Service Medal (2); Air Medal (23); Navy Commendation Medal (4); Letter of Commendation from the Japan Defense Agency; and numerous campaign awards.
Admiral Tuttle is survived by his wife, Barbara Bonifay Tuttle; five children: Michael, Vicky, Mark, Stephen and Monique; six grandchildren: Michael, Carleigh, Sean, Lauren, Scott and Caroline; and two great-grandchildren: Corianne and Taryn.
The family will receive friends at the Money & King Funeral Home, 171 W. Maple Ave., Vienna, Va on Friday, November 9th from 6 to 8 PM. Funeral services will take place at Arlington National Cemetery on March 14. 2019 at 12:45 PM. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to the Naval Aviation Museum, 1878 S. Blue Angel Parkway, Pensacola, Florida 32508.
Admiral Tuttle was an iconic, even cult, figure in the U.S. military as well as in many Allied militaries abroad and is generally credited with being the inventor of modern command and control and the pivotal personality that led Navy especially across the divide from the industrial to the digital age. He was seen by many as a genuine military genius and compared with the air power and blitzkrieg innovators of the 1920s, with British Admiral Jackie Fisher, who transformed the Royal Navy at the opening of the last Century, and with Admiral Hyman Rickover, whose nuclear submarines would rely on many of Admiral Tuttle’s innovations.
In contrast with these, however, he was neither a theorist nor the champion of a single technology, though he had deep expertise in military communications and revolutionized both its form and function. He spent much of his career at sea and much of that time in command at sea. In particular, he had exceptionally long tours as a commander of four separate carrier task forces. In consequence, Admiral Tuttle’s inventions and innovations arose out of operational experience, and more than once, from operational necessity.
Like Thomas Edison, Admiral Tuttle was a perpetual dynamo for whom innovation was a part of his essential character— a consequence of indefatigable and explosive energy, a unique intellect, technological curiosity, and relentless drive. One after another, his innovations continued throughout the span of his career and across the entire landscape of warfare, from submarines and satellites to cryptography, information technology, avionics, antennas, modeling and simulation, and above all, operational synthesis.
“He seemed at once to be both an irresistible force and an immoveable object,” a former aide said. Less than eight years off the farm with just a small-town high school education, then-Lieutenant Tuttle was already an accomplished pilot, had earned both his undergraduate degree and a graduate degree in communications engineering (he later would earn two more graduate degrees) and at the age of 28 was designing and fielding the critical system that enabled Navy’s new nuclear submarines to communicate.
Above all, he was an exceptional pilot. Like almost every other boy in America during the late 1940s, he was fascinated by the first jet airplanes. In time, he flew nearly all the Navy fixed-wing and jet carrier aircraft inventory. He made so many arrested landings on carriers that if one were flown each day it would take nearly three years to duplicate his feat. For a time, he was Navy’s senior aviator— the “Gray Eagle”— a position that de facto made him the community leader and patron for more than half of Navy’s officer corps. As such he held great power over promotions and positions, which he wielded masterfully, gathering about him a school of officers who were both technologically and operationally astute. He placed them key positions within the Fleet and the shore bureaucracies, where collectively they became the lever by which he revolutionized the Navy.
In Vietnam, Admiral Tuttle became a highly decorated combat pilot, flying 260 missions in the single-seat light attack A-4. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for personal heroism three times, and he held twenty-three Navy Air Medals. Combat contemporaries invariably describe him in the cockpit as intense, ferociously aggressive, and fearless under fire of North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns. But he told an interviewer in 2006 that the most frightening moments in his life were when he proposed to Barbara Ann Bonifay, whom he met on a blind date at flight school in Pensacola in the summer of 1955. She said yes, and the couple were married for 63 years. They had five children.
In “Boots” — as she was known to their friends— Tuttle met his match. Beautiful, vivacious, and polished, she, too, had a brilliant mind, a formidable will and extraordinary reservoirs of energy. In particular, she had a gift for human empathy, and like her husband, she had innate leadership skills. During the frightening years Tuttle’s squadron was in Vietnam and later during the long tours in which he had command at sea, she carried exceptionally heavy burdens for decades to look after families left at home.
Together they were a matched set, and in the end, they both became legendary in the Navy. “They had a sort of gravitational pull that caused people in any room, no matter how large or small, to gather around them,” said a wardroom friend. “He had a great laugh you could hear across a room, and inevitably all the action would gravitate around Boots’ animated figure. It simply was not possible not to want to be around them.”
Jerry Owen Tuttle was born December 18, 1934 in Spencer County, Indiana to Charles Tuttle and the former Wenonah Parker. They worked a small, marginal family farm only a few miles from Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood homestead cleared from the woodlands and plowed out of the sandy deposits of Ohio River. Growing up there, Admiral Tuttle told an interviewer, “all you could do was throw a hundred baseballs a day against the barn wall and listen to the radio at night.”
Like Lincoln, he spoke in a reedy and nasal Midwestern twang. Both were pranksters and both were accomplished storytellers and actors. Both exhibited a genius that was evident at an early age to those they grew up with; both were exceedingly ambitious; and both had a gift for rapidly seeing into the heart of complex problems and finding the core matters.
There, however, any comparison ends. If Lincoln strove to be the calm in the storm, Tuttle was himself a storm. Neither laconic nor patient, Admiral Tuttle had the wiry athletic frame of the baseball shortstop he once aspired to be as a boy, and it was fueled with endless reservoirs of physical energy. He was a relentless, focused and demanding personality that wore out almost everyone that worked for him, yet he was genuinely interested in them and meticulously attentive to them.
His mind was remarkably clear and worked so fast that at times in conversation his speech could not keep up. To the uninitiated, he seemed to talk in a stream of consciousness that could be bewildering and made all the more so as he grew more intense with gestures like a boxer’s jabs and suddenly-narrowed blue eyes that could burn through iron plate. He could be easy to underestimate— once.
Admiral Tuttle was masterful in command. There was never a question of what he wanted or when he wanted it, which was always immediately. Famously, on more than one occasion as a carrier group commander, he summarily fired a particularly poor performing staff officer, ordered him to be launched immediately off the ship and then recall the aircraft and the unfortunate passenger an hour later once the lesson was learned. Such episodes betrayed an essential character attribute: he was a master of delegation and a consummate builder of teams, and it was this that enabled him to extend his vision far beyond his personal reach.
Like Lincoln, Jerry Tuttle left home and never returned, but in the final years of his life the Admiral was preoccupied with plans to improve the economic future of his hometown of Hatfield. It was one of the few projects in which he would not succeed, for time would not allow it. In 1955, he reported to Navy enlisted boot camp in Great Lakes, IL along with hundreds of other recruits for basic training. So obvious were his abilities that at the end of the first week, he was pulled aside and offered flight training and a commission. He was awarded the American Spirit Honor Medal on graduation from Great Lakes.
Eighteen months later in the autumn of 1956, Boots pinned his wings on him. They spent the next four years at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego CA, where Admiral Tuttle flew both fighters and attack aircraft and held every billet in the squadron. There he had been noticed again, and although he had only a high school degree, he was sent to the prestigious Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey CA. By then, he was already a father of two young children, and he worked night and day to earn both his undergraduate and a graduate degree in communications engineering simultaneously.
In 1962, only eight years out of an Indiana high school, Lieutenant Tuttle was ordered to the Pentagon to head a team tasked with developing the technology to solve one of the most urgent operational problems of the time. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy Administration had grown increasingly concerned about command and control of nuclear weapons and had ordered an overhaul of the existing national command system. Lieutenant Tuttle was given the task of devising and fielding a system to provide nuclear launch codes to the first class of the submarines capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles. His team fielded an aircraft-borne radio antenna nearly five miles long that trailed behind a modified tanker aircraft and could transmit signals capable of penetrating the ocean depths to the submarine. It was a solution typical of him: throughout his life he led people to bring new technology to tactics in order to enable new ways of operating. Tuttle’s system was known as TACAMO for “Take Charge and Move Out”— a certain Tuttle-ism. It remains in use today more than six decades later.
For the next 20 years with only three short interruptions, Admiral Tuttle’s career was a continuing series of increasingly senior aviation and command assignments. During two tours over Vietnam, like Senator John McCain, Admiral James Stockdale and hundreds of other Navy aviators of his generation, Tuttle flew the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk— universally called the “scooter” by pilots— in the Rolling Thunder bombing operations over North Vietnam conducted from 1965 to 1968. Though it was fast for the time and handled well under light load, the A-4 was sluggish to maneuver when it carried heavy bomb loads, and against increasingly sophisticated North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft fire, losses mounted.
A replacement aircraft was needed urgently, and after a hiatus at the Naval War College, where he earned his second master’s degree, and a tour as an aide to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, it would be then-Commander Tuttle who was tapped in 1970 to introduce the A-7 successor aircraft into the fleet, to define its tactics, and to command its first squadron. He was promoted to Captain, and throughout that decade he ascended to a series of major commands, including Carrier Air Wing 3, USS Kalamazoo (AOR-6) and the aircraft carrier USS John Kennedy (CV-67). All along the way, he redefined operations by pushing men, technology and tactics to the edge. In one exercise, he commanded his pilots to land on anchored carriers to force them to learn to fly with less speed and lift. In several others, he developed the first tactics for very-long-range carrier air strikes from the sea onto land. A contemporary called him “the best tactical commander since World War II.”
In 1980, Tuttle was selected as a flag officer, and in an unusual assignment, he was sent to a high position within the Defense Intelligence Agency. There he became exposed for the first time to the detailed inner workings of the intelligence world and especially its satellite assets, which he saw could be refocused and reapplied to tactical targeting if new technology could be applied. And, like a bargain hunter in an estate sale, he saw that the intelligence agencies had a diminishing use for an entire constellation of communications satellites, which if modified, a communications-starved Navy might take over on the cheap.
As a result, though Admiral Tuttle held many flag assignments including command of the Sixth Fleet Task Force off off Lebanon in 1983 and was later the Navy Inspector General, for the remainder of his career he became focused on three fundamental tasks that would transform the Navy and ultimately all military command and control. First, he was determined to bring targeting intelligence directly to the battle commander and, on a machine-to-machine level, directly to the weapons themselves, eliminating the practice of channeling it first through intelligence “fusion centers.” This forced him to take on a large segment of the entrenched Navy community, which he ultimately dismantled. It was a complex, multistep achievement that paved the way for the modern weapons of Desert Storm— long-range cruise missiles targeted precisely by the Global Positioning System and other resources that he would bring on line during the last years of his career.
The second task was to buy, borrow or steal the communications bandwidth necessary to get that information onto Navy ships at sea and tactical units ashore where communications were poor. He did all three to do it, had the antennas and processors invented to use different signals and wavelengths, and a second fiefdom, the Navy Communications Command, fell under his axe.
The third task he set about was so revolutionary it is difficult to imagine today. In 1983 aboard his flagship as commander of the Mediterranean carrier task forces steaming off Lebanon, Admiral Tuttle’s frustration mounted daily as he watched dozens of sailors and staff officers inside his darkened command center struggle with grease pencils, teletype messages and paper charts to try keep a simultaneous plot of the complex and dynamic tactical air, land and sea picture ashore and afloat.
He pulled together a team of contractors and Navy technicians, who three years later produced the world’s first tactical workstation. It projected targeting data from a variety of different sensors all over the earth as real time targetable positions overlaid on electronic charts and manipulable on new screen technology then called simply “windows.” Officially it was called the Joint Operational Tactical System— JOTS— but everyone understood it was Jerry O. Tuttle’s system. It made long-standing programs in the Navy that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and were years overdue obsolete overnight.
Armed with this and an increasing cadre of followers in the Navy, in Congress and in industry, over the next 10 years, hundreds of people at first, then thousands, were called in to hone the JOTS system. When he got his third star, Admiral Tuttle moved to JCS and once there, when he personally beat, dragged and kicked the long-delayed Navy GPS Program into space, he had created something so fundamental that several billion cell phone users today could not imagine a world without Google Maps. By February 1991, the JOTS terminal was a joint system in reality, and GPS-enabled work stations made it possible for General Norman Schwarzkopf ’s “Hail Mary” play to sweep across the western desert of Iraq to destroy the Iraqi Army.
His final career tour was on the Chief of Naval Operations staff, where he was deliberately extended longer to solidify his revolution and slay any remaining dragons. By the time he retired in 1994, his legacy was set in stone. He succeeded both dramatically and decisively, after a long succession of technological innovations both large and small, many redirections and reallocations of large Pentagon programs, operational and tactical exercises, and without question as a result of sheer personal determination. Before Admiral Tuttle, Navy used manual Morse, teletypes and paper charts to drop dumb bombs from airplanes over short distances. When he finished, Navy had the Global Positioning System, AEGIS, modeling and simulation, the full use of three communications satellite constellations, digital workstations, and altogether new weaponry that flew up and down mountain sides and landed a thousand miles inland with accuracy that astounded the world.
Admiral Tuttle’s personal decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (3); Defense Superior Service Medal; Legion of Merit (4); Distinguished Flying Cross (3); Meritorious Service Medal (2); Air Medal (23); Navy Commendation Medal (4); Letter of Commendation from the Japan Defense Agency; and numerous campaign awards.
Admiral Tuttle is survived by his wife, Barbara Bonifay Tuttle; five children: Michael, Vicky, Mark, Stephen and Monique; six grandchildren: Michael, Carleigh, Sean, Lauren, Scott and Caroline; and two great-grandchildren: Corianne and Taryn.
The family will receive friends at the Money & King Funeral Home, 171 W. Maple Ave., Vienna, Va on Friday, November 9th from 6 to 8 PM. Funeral services will take place at Arlington National Cemetery on March 14. 2019 at 12:45 PM. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to the Naval Aviation Museum, 1878 S. Blue Angel Parkway, Pensacola, Florida 32508.
I had the pleasure and honor to meet and work for Adm. Tuttle in 1991 in the Pentagon. As a second class Radioman in the Navy, Adm. Tuttle impressed me so much, he was a man of honor and integrity. I also had the pleasure to meet his wife at the 25th anniversary of the Navy Space Surveillance System. I was so sorry to hear the news of his passing. My heart goes out to Mrs. Tuttle and all of the family.
Fair Winds and following Seas Adm. Tuttle!
Susan H. Jordan
Jerry did me the honor of presiding over my change of command. I felt quite honored that he would do this for me. Jane o’Dea
I have so many memories of ADM T from his time at DIA and his focused determination to help get answers on America’s POW/MIAs form the Vietnam War. He was principled, impatient, persistent, determined, energetic, dedicated and such a remarkable person. He even managed to bury at sea the recovered and identified remains of LCDR Nicholas Brooks, son of a mutual friend and Chairman of League, the late George Brooks. ADM T was remarkable and his contributions to our country immeasurable. Our loss is heaven’s gain, and ADM T is among friends and admirers. My thoughts and prayers are with Boots and the Tuttle family. Ann Mills-Griffiths, Chairman/CEO, National League of POW/MIA Families
I am so very saddened to learn of Jerry’s passing. We have lost one of the finest — a true patriot, leader, hero, mentor, friend, gentleman and inspiration. My sincere condolences to Boots and Jerry’s children and grandchildren, and other family and friends. He will be missed tremendously, but not forgotten by anyone fortunate enough to have been touched by his kindness, wisdom and enduring spirit. May he navigate the waters of the universe with the same gentle strength, humility and sagacity that guided so many of us who knew, learned from, admired and loved him. May he rest in peace and may his family find comfort, love and joy in every cherished memory of Jerry.
Amy M. Fadida
Fair Winds and following Seas Adm. Tuttle, it was a pleasure working with you.
I was saddened to hear the news of Admiral Tuttle’s passing. When I read about the arc of his life and his many, many accomplishments it leaves me truly in awe. I knew him only briefly but in that time he radiated kindness, intensity, humility and warmth. My deepest condolences to his family. I wish them warm sustaining memories of a long life rich in achievement, courage, service, and love.
Thank you Jerry. For your service to our Nation. For your service as an advisor in our early years. For your sage advice. For your belief in us. For your friendship. For opening our eyes that we could find the pony Jerry. Condolences and sincere respect to your family and other friends. Fair winds and following seas.
CAPT Jerry L. Terrell, USN (Ret.)
A great loss, not only to friends and family but to our country. He was a man of exceptional talent but also of great empathy. He would go out of his way to do a favor for a friend, He will be missed by one and all. RIP Tut. Possum
Admiral Tuttle was one of CO’s during my tour on USS John F Kennedy, very tough but fair. RIP sir.??
Herman Banks (LCDR retired))
VADM (ret.) Jerry Tuttle, USN, Advisor and Friend
Best boss I ever had
Thank you, Jerry. For your service as Chairman in Systematic Inc and for your personal guidance and couching of me as a business leader. Your visons and dreams was, and some still are, amazing and can change the world to something better. My deepest condolences to Tuttle’s family. RIP
Admiral Tuttle was truly a great American! –
My husband and I never got to know him because of the ravages of Parkinson’s Disease, but on one occasion during the admiral’s last days, my husband Dave (US Army, 1971-1973) saluted him.
We DID get to know his beloved Boots a bit during the admiral’s last days. A great lady!
May Admiral Tuttle rest in peace, and may his family know the peace that passes all understanding.
Respectfully,
Ada and Dave Evans
Falls Church, VA
Navy ranks of all ages and pay grades are filled with the most remarkable men and women of honor, courage, commitment and selfless dedication to our nation’s wellness. But oh so few are they who embody the greatest leadership, achievement and caring skills as did Jerry Tuttle. I worked for him late in his career and am content in saying I never met nor labored alongside one so truly deserving of our highest praise or admiration.
Innovator, Orator, Problem-solver, Business Leader
Visionary
My sympathy is with the Admiral’s family. I never knew him personally, but I encountered his achievements and his wonderfully sparkling way of thinking all the time in my work. I’m truly sorry he’s gone.
Thomas C. Hone
When I was in the navy, he coincidentally made a visit to my submarine while we were underway and I was up in the conning tower. He didn’t know me but I knew of him, so I told him I was the grandson of the grocery owner in little old Hatfield that employed him when he was a kid. It was an awesome moment. He was so nice and still remembered me when I called him years after I left the navy. What a loss.
My deepest sympathy to Mrs T and the Tuttle family on your loss. And also my deepest thanks for sharing Admiral Tuttle with all of us. It was an honor to serve under him, a privilege to work with him and a blessing to have his sage counsel as guidance. I’m still quoting him after almost 25 years. And more and more realizing his caution about buying green bananas. This world is a lesser place because he’s stood his last watch, but Heaven’s shores are now much better guarded. God Bless.
Fair Winds and Following Seas VADM Tuttle! My condolences to the Tuttle family. I have a vivid memory of meeting VADM Tuttle in his Pentagon office in early 1992 when he was Director OP-094/N-6. At the time I was part of the Navy Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar (ROTHR) Program Office. The meeting with my boss, the ROTHR Program Manager, was to make a pitch convincing VADM Tuttle to keep our program funded. During the meeting VADM Tuttle held up the front page of a newspaper with the big headline END OF THE SOVIET UNION. ROTHR was then restructured; with only the two systems then on contract. The full program of twelve systems was cancelled, because it was no longer needed as intended to monitor the Soviet fleet. He taught me the pragmatic side of program management.
I only met the Admiral as I was retiring from active duty, having spent the last part of my career at SPAWAR he was a legend on campus. His advice was always sound, and very practical. Navy C4I is better from him, and yet we have a large loss in the community. Fair Winds and Following Seas.
Wonderful leader in the Navy! Miss his “stick and rudder” attitude! Went a long way to make the C4I (C5I) Navy what it is today! Thank you Sir for your vision and direction. We all needed it – you made a difference and we needed that. Salute!!!
“May your worst tomorrow be better than your best yesterday”
One of my favorite JOT sayings and the epitome of what he wanted for all of us. When asked how he was doing, the response was more likely than not; “If I got any better, I’d need a waiver!” Only a fool would not want to be near a man who had such a positive outlook on life.
I was a “Black Shoe” who did not want orders to go to the Pentagon and work for VADM Tuttle. Little did I know that job would be the best shore assignment I ever had and what an impact Jerry O Tuttle would have on my life. I was privileged to work directly for the Admiral, was honored that he became my mentor and humbled that in retirement he considered me his friend. He saw horizons that we mere staff mortals sometimes struggled to comprehend and he challenged each of us to climb higher so that we could see his vision of the future. Our Navy would not be near as formidable today without his leadership. The Nation and the Navy are forever in his debt.
His callsign was “SLUFF”, although he would argue that there was only one “F” in that word. He described himself as a “dumb potato farmer from Indiana”. Clear evidence of his humility, humanity and definitely far from the truth. Indiana – yes; potato farmer – probably; dumb – not even close. Evidence of his intellect was demonstrated when he came to the conclusion that he should ask Barbara Ann Bonifay to marry him. What a great team they have been since New Year’s Eve 1956. Just as Jerry was a mentor to those of us who served under him, Boots was the mentor to our “better halves”.
I know that he is in heaven watching over us because, late on the afternoon of Tuesday October 30. 2018, I was listening to The Pearly Gates PRIFLY when I heard:
“SLUFF, Saint Peter, Call the Ball”
I want to express my sadness over the death of VADM Tuttle. I was fortunate to have been a civilian member of his Pentagon staff, during a period of signifiant changes in Command and Control. I had met many qualified people in the Navy laboratories, but VADM Tuttle was truly one of the most significant. His death will be regarded as a great loss to the Navy and the Nation.
Dr Howard L. (Larry) Wiener
Cdr. Tuttle (Capt) in 1971 was my commanding officer – VA-81. The finest officer and gentleman a young sailor could have to look up to for guidance at the end of a 4 year hitch. Every man in our squadron respected our capt. Fair winds and following seas sir. AMH2 Clifford W. SNYDER – Attack Squadron 81.
Cdr. Tuttle (Capt) in 1971 was my commanding officer – VA-81. The finest officer and gentleman a young sailor could have to look up to for guidance at the end of a 4 year hitch. Every man in our squadron respected our capt. Fair winds and following seas sir. AMH2 Clifford W. SNYDER – Attack Squadron 81.
VADM Tuttle was an inspiration, an irritation, and a revelation every day that I worked for him on the OPNAV Staff in the 90s. I watched in awe as he and his staff essentially reinvented command and control for the cyber age. He dragged me into the Pentagon as a fresh-pinned SWO Commander and in the process completely remade my career path. I join all of my shipmates in mourning the loss of a truly irreplaceable man. Fair winds, Admiral. See you next time in Fiddlers Green.
Served under the Admiral when he was COMCARGRU2/CTF60, in my 24 year career he was the best Today’s’ Navy will never see the like again. A different generation and different standards, he was admired by all of us and the consummate leader. The old saying applied…”We would follow him to the ends of the earth.” Those of us still here have the watch Admiral, Peace. RMC(SW) H. Rempel Ret.
I’d heard of Admiral Tuttle long before I had the honor to meet him. My father worked on one of his projects at Seal Beach, CA in the late 1980’s. Later, my husband became his Aide in 1991 at the Pentagon. In person, he surpassed his well-earned reputation: innovative, total commitment, charismatic leadership, strong drive, and so much more. As the spouse of his Aide & an x-Naval Officer, my 1st impression & lasting memory of Admiral Tuttle were his twinkling eyes, impish smile & his delightful laugh: his genuine warmth. He earned my loyalty when he used his common-sense and perseverance to mainstream IT into all the Navy’s missions: tactical & business. At that time, it was an enormous challenge that only Admiral Tuttle could surmount. He’s a true maverick for all time. I trust he will rest in peace.
It’s been 5 weeks now since Admiral Tuttle left us, and I still can’t believe that he’s really gone. Jerry was the most interesting, intellectually brilliant, insightful, challenging, optimistic, caring, and unforgettable leader I’ve ever known or worked for. I personally experienced his tactical brilliance during Norwegian Sea operations in 1981 and the K-310-Lant Over-the-Horizon exercise in 1986. Everyone involved said if we ever went to war, we wanted Admiral Tuttle to lead us. A few years later I and other members of the Copernicus Project Team were privileged to capture his vision for leveraging Information Technology to enable Navy to advance to all-digital communications and merge the computer and communications communities into one. He supported us, encouraged us, and most importantly had our backs as critics and special interests tried to stop the Copernicus Architecture from being approved and implemented. He was equally masterful and successful in the commercial world after retiring. He was also an incredibly powerful public speaker, who liberally sprinkled wise aphorisms throughout his speeches. One that he frequently used summed up for me his perspective and guidance to us all : “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” He’s gone on to his heavenly reward, but he’ll never be forgotten.
While I did not know Admiral Tuttle personally during his distinguished career, I had the privilege of working with him in the private sector. He was a people person that expected much but always gave much. I worked directly for him and had many sessions where his advice was enlightening and memorable, and his business strategies were right on target. He showed the best that leaders have to offer – caring, listening, deciding, encouraging and steadfast support of his people. I enjoyed my time with him a great deal.
I’ve given a great deal of thought over several decades about the contributions he made, and I believe he was a naval genius, greatly underestimated at present. But genius is like blue eyes— you’re born with it. His truly great accomplishment was made not alone but with his wife, Boots, and it can be easily stated: they made us all better people.
Captain Gary Scoffield: Jerry Tuttle was my classmate in the 1955 Cadet Drill Team. We were very good friends and I will always remember the trip with him to see his parents. We also stopped at a horse racetrack for an afternoon which was my first time at the event. He was always charging ahead & making the best of everything he was involved with. Rest In Peace & hopefully we’ll meet again on the Carrier in the sky.
LCDR Rene M. Fry: I had the honor of serving under SLUF when he was the Captain onboard the USS John F. Kennedy. In a man’s life there are few truly great men you might get the chance to know and work with. Jerry taught me to be a man. He taught me to believe that mankind has no limits and that we all should strive to be better today than we were yesterday. Thank you Admiral for helping me to become a successful and respected man. The world and the United States will miss your leadership.
My first XO then CO in VA-81 back in 1971 JOT was well known for his “I’ll out work ‘em” ethic. He would not accept less than full effort from all squadron mates. He would “wring you out” on training flights culminating with 4-plane tail-chase—-a workout and great fun. Miss you JO.
Have a picture of then Captain Tuttle pinning on my LT Bars while deployed in the med in JFK (1978
A real patriot
Ken Maxwell Captain, USN (Ret)
A memorial tree was planted in memory of the decedent.
Jerry lived about three or four houses from us in Hatfield Indiana
My SLUF is no more. This is a sad day for me. I worked in the Captain’s Office on the USS John F. Kennedy 1978-1980. Tuttle was the best. Memories are strong and never to be forgotten.
VADM Tuttle, I mean no disrespect to dishonor your passing or wish you or your family ill will. However, you were the Commanding Officer when you gave the “go ahead” to utilize a faulty back-up catapult system that sent my father’s A-7E jet into the ocean aboard the USS Kennedy. My father drowned and died on 6/22/1978. There is no mention in the military archives of his death. I only wish my father’s accomplishments would have been acknowledged or at least recognized. I will never know what life would be like with my father around because his life was taken from me tragically. Navy medals, honors, and promotions do not define a man’s character. However, the chose you made that day took my father’s life and dishonored his memory. I forgive you because that is what God commands of me. May you rest in peace and thank you for your service to our country. Son of forgotten aviator, US Veteran of the Navy and Army.
I will never remember my first dinner with J.O. and Boots in their home in San Diego (December 1959).
I was fresh out of flight training and more than a bit naive. He asked me what a P2V-7 mission was. Having not joined the squadron I had little knowledge of the maritime patrol, ASW, and surveillance missions of the Neptune. The lesson I took away from my few social months with J.O.? Know what you are getting into and be good at it. He was a very no BS guy.
Remembering Jerry with fondness and admiration.
Just another sailor who served under Captain Tuttle from 1978 to1980, when he was promoted to Admiral. He was fair but tough. I never had to go to Captain’s mast – Not that I didn’t come close once or twice, but one half month’s pay for two months, reduction in rank and thirty days in the brigg was where it STARTED if you appeared before him. He ran a tight ship. And yet he was self aware as well.
I will never forget the day he came across the 1MC and announced, “Good afternoon, Kennedy. This is ‘SLUF’ speaking.” Now if you know what that stands for, you know what I am talking about.
Then there was the time one of the boilers blew up. My G.Q. station was on the bridge. I’ll never forget the look on Captain Tuttle’s face as I entered the bridge. He was one week away from his promotion ceremony. Let’s just say he was in total disbelief of what was happening and yet cool as a cucumber. His crew had it under control.
I have always admired him.
Roger on SLUF. WHEN STANDING AT ATTENTION, he told me to call him that when we were alone. Looking down and said “ aye aye sluf. He smiled and walked away. Admired that man unendingly.
A great man, mentor and leader.